I was really surprised by this book. It was on the shelf of the house I was living in a couple of decades back in Italy. I assumed it was a kids' book initially, but when I ran out of things to read, I picked it up and was completely engrossed.

hackenslash wrote:Oh, read Republic and some bits and bots of Aristotle, as well.

Anything from the ancient world, I've read. I was on course for a degree in Classics at Oxford (unconditional offer) when I realised that was not going to be fun!

I'll have to see if I can brave A History of Western Philosophy - it was an optional book on my course many years ago, but I recall it being large and unwieldy and I never got round to reading it.

Launched a new section of the blog, essentially a frequently-asked questions section, entitled FAAAAAAAAAAA Q! (just my little joke). It will mostly consist of short, sharp rebuttals to common apologetic arguments.

Great quote there, and surprising how closely I've unknowingly imitated that sentence in the past!

It also led me to check the provenance of that quote (sorry, old habit) and to thereby find another beauty...

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

The last is the great beauty and endless pleasure of trying out ideas, just playing with your mind. It's where the arts and sciences become indistinguishable.

It simply doesn't matter whether the ideas toyed with are right or wrong, it's the act of toying, the play, the flexing of certain cognitive muscles which provides the value, if for no other reason than exercising an ability keeps it from atrophying.

For example, reading your entry I had the wonderful idea of there being wrinkles in the fabric of reality, and black holes being artifacts of these cosmic fault lines... which in my mind were then outlined as an image of a Mandelbrot set. It's utterly wrong, of course, in so many ways... not-even-wrong, actually... but one never knows what other ideas might be spurred by such playing around.

This is one of those numerous topics that gets thrown up into a conversation by Creationists or science-deniers, but usually gets dismissed rather than discussed, that science is just about guesses. But in truth, the actual act of performing science has a huge great component of creativity: being able to see the world differently, even just for a startling moment, than any other person previously.

Of course, one must never fail prey to the narcissism which would then cause the sufferer to assume that, just because they can think it, that makes it possible, plausible or true. The rest of the scientific method steps in there to sort the wheat from the chaff, but in terms of how the process begins, discovery is necessarily about subverting what was previously held to be true through employing sheer imagination.

That was sort of difficult to listen to. I couldn't have remained sane trying to have that conversation. It was clear you did your best but struggled as well. I cringed when her first few sentences included Lee Strobel. But I've been there myself so I get it. When you've never done anything but assume what you learned was true it's hard to get outside that bubble and see that everything you think is real rests on an assumption it's true. If she could ever grasp that one thing it might change things for her. You do the world a service by trying to have these discussions. I don't think it will change her views much but others who tune in might get something to think about.

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time." “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ~~Voltaire

That's the hope. I actually thought she did better than I thought she would, but not for any of the reasons she probably thinks she did well.

The biggest problem is that her favourite fallacy - apart from affirming the consequent, which underlies all theistic thinking in some measure - is argumentum ad verecundiam. She knows it's a fallacy, but can't get her head around it.

"But this is irrelevant because in either case, whether a god exists or not, whether your God (with a capital G) exists or not, it doesn't matter. We both are, in either case, evolved apes. " - Nesslig20